1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device for displaying sewing patterns, such as characters and pictures, to be sewn in a workpiece cloth.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a household sewing machine capable of sewing embroidery in a predetermined pattern, such as, characters and pictures, in a workpiece cloth. The sewing machine sews the embroidery based on embroidery data corresponding to a plurality of types of patterns. The household sewing machine receives the embroidery data either from an external memory medium, such as a memory card, or from an internal memory in which the embroidery data is prestored. For example, personal computers can retrieve predetermined embroidery data and control a sewing needle drive mechanism and a cloth feed mechanism, such as an embroidery frame, to sew embroidery stitches into the workpiece cloth.
Such household sewing machines can be provided with a display, such as a liquid crystal display (LCD), provided to the front surface of the main body of the sewing machine. When a user wants to start sewing operations to embroider a desired pattern, he or she can select a desired pattern from a plurality of patterns displayed on the display. A position edit mode is provided to allow combining a plurality of patterns, such as text character patterns with other character patterns or character patterns with picture patterns. In this case, after the user selects a first pattern, he or she can switch to the position edit mode, whereupon the display switches to a screen the user can use to change the positions of the selected sewing patterns. It should be noted that color display devices are expensive, so normally an inexpensive monochrome LCD is used as the display device.
FIG. 1 shows an example of the position edit screen described above. The display device 1 displays on its screen an overall layout region a representing the size of the embroidery frame the sewing machine uses to sew in the workpiece cloth. The display device 1 displays the overall layout region a displayed encompassed by a frame and superimposed with three sewing patterns g, h, and i selected by the user. The sewing patterns g, h, and i are proportionally sized images representing how the patterns will appear when embroidered on the workpiece cloth. In the example shown in FIG. 1, the sewing pattern g is a picture pattern "elephant", the sewing pattern h is a character group pattern "HAPPY", and the pattern i is a character group pattern "HIMAWARI GUMI," which is Japanese for "sunflower group". The three sewing patterns will be referred as portion patterns and the combination of the three portion patterns as an overall sewing pattern hereinafter.
The sewing machine is designed so that the user can view the screen of the display device 1 and operate an operation panel to indicate positions of the portion patterns g, h, and i, and, with respect to the character pattern groups h and i, to indicate spacing between characters, and the size of the characters, that is, to magnify or reduce the size of the characters. The display of the portion patterns g, h, and i can be moved, magnified, or reduced in accordance with these commands from the user. Once the arrangement of portion patterns is to the liking of the user, the arrangement of the overall sewing pattern is inputted so that embroidery on the workpiece cloth can be performed.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application No. HEI-2-1516 describes an embroidery pattern forming apparatus including a pattern memory storing data on a plurality of patterns; a pattern selection device for selecting desired patterns from the patterns; a group defining means for designating the desired patterns into groups and setting an origin coordinate for each group; a format setting means for setting format, such as orientation, font, size, and the like to the group; a display control means for displaying the groups set by the group defining means, based on the origin coordinate and with shape and positional relationship set by the format setting means; and a stitch preparation means for preparing stitch data based on the form and positional relationship of the groups as displayed on the display.